Big Sur tribe regains land 250 years after being removed

[David Lockmiller]

Big Sur tribe regains land 250 years after being removed

Nearly 250 years ago, when Spanish soldiers built a military outpost in Monterey and Franciscan padres founded the Carmel, Soledad, and San Antonio missions nearby, the Esselen tribe — who had lived in the area for 8,000 years — was decimated. Brought to the missions to be baptized and converted to Catholicism, Esselen families were broken up. They were were stripped of their culture, their language and their lands by the late 1700s.

The Esselen Tribe of Monterey County closed escrow to purchase 1,199 acres in Big Sur as part of a $4.5 million acquisition involving the state and an Oregon-based environmental group. The purchase provides the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County 1,199 acres along Little Sur River, an area slightly larger than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It represents the first time that the Esselen Tribe has regained any of its former territory more than 200 years after Spanish missionaries upended the tribe’s society, causing 90% of the roughly 1,000 Esselen people by the early 1800s to die of disease and other causes.

Located along Palo Colorado Road on the north side of the Little Sur River about 20 miles south of Monterey and 5 miles inland from the ocean, the land features endangered steelhead trout, old-growth redwoods, oak woodlands and meadows along scenic ridge tops.

The tribe, which today has 214 members, will share it with other Central Coast tribes like the Ohlone, the Amah Mutsun and the Rumsen people who also were decimated during the Mission Era.

To see beautiful photographs of the area reacquired (thankfully – my word added) by the Esselen tribe, follow the above hyperlink.

(Source: the Mercury News)